Extraordinary Women Sharing -
The Divine Power Of EDGE
Discover the Secret to Inner Strength and Awaken Your Own
Power of “Everyday Divine Grace Expressed” as You Journey Through the
Intimate Stories of These Inspiring Women.
Foreword by Bill Bauman, Ph.D.
Grace! What an amazing and remarkable phenomenon it is! This one simple word expresses one of the most compelling and touching behind-the-scenes facets of life imaginable. Every day of our lives is filled with, surprised by and blessed with this simple, unassuming fact of life—grace.
Even the name that we have assigned to this love-filled quality, grace, is gentle, feminine, sweet. The Thesaurus lists the following words as synonyms of grace: elegance, loveliness, beauty, poise and charm—all terms of the purely beating heart and expressions of the truly inspiring soul. The name itself, as well as what it symbolizes, so tenderly invites us into life’s loving gifts, endless possibilities and magical interventions. How can we resist the charm and beauty of grace, when it so sweetly invites us to share its abundance?
I feel truly honored to have been asked to write the Foreword to this timely book about the workings of grace in the lives of very special women. First, the fact that I personally know most of the women whose stories are included within these pages—and have played a role, hopefully significant, in the many miracles of their lives—makes introducing them to you a very special privilege.
Second, during the past many years of my life, I have become somewhat of a specialist in the magical workings of grace—witnessing it wondrously materialize in the lives of countless people, facilitating it into creative expression for innumerable others, and living in awe of its magnificence as it daily appears in this precious world of ours. These experiences actually led my beautiful wife Donna and me, when we founded our non-profit organization, The Center for Soulful Living, to officially dedicate its work to helping people “to recognize and receive the miracle of grace in daily life.” Thus, I am deeply privileged and grateful for this rare opportunity to introduce you intimately to grace and to the women who have had such close experiences with it in their lives.
Perhaps the most seemingly simple yet pivotal question for you as you begin to read this inspiring book is: What is grace? I’d like to offer you my own thoughts about this question, thoughts that have come to me through the years of playing so fully in grace’s playground.
First and foremost, I have come to see grace as a deeply personal, love-inspired, intimate gift. This precious gift, which indeed is one that keeps on giving and giving, comes to us from none other than our ever-devoted divine source, from that limitless fountain of infinite love, from life’s bounteous wellspring of universal abundance. Yes, grace is the pure outpouring of God’s supreme dedication to us, and its daily manifestations express the indescribable love that connects and bonds the divine and human realms. In short, the word grace describes the expressive beauty of our love relationship with God. How fortunate we all are to be caught in that embracing web of infinite love!
Grace is also, it seems to me, a term we use to explain the unexplainable miracles that come to visit us. When we live long enough in this sometimes rational world of ours, we come to realize that the deeper truths of life can’t be explained from within the mind’s genius. Rather, precious gifts such as the ones we receive from grace arise from realms about which our trained minds have little explanation; they bespeak a source beyond the grasp of our rational minds; and they defy our best efforts to concoct grand theories about them.
In truth, we can only truly see the love fest of grace through the eyes of the heart … and understand it from the higher intelligence of the soul. When our hearts and souls are showing us their view of life, we enter a privileged world—one where we can grasp grace’s gifts and miracles from a personal space of wonder, one where our eyes begin to open wider to life’s marvels, and one where we experience an ever-expanding state of awe.
What a wonderful, mysterious, possibility-filled world we live in! When we dare to view life here through the eyes of our hearts, we come to experience everything—literally everything—as an act of never-ending love. And, to me, that’s exactly what grace is: an intimate, gracious act of divine love. Could it be that everything that happens within and around us, even though it’s so tempting to perceive it through our learned concepts of right and wrong or good and evil, is truly an act of infinite loving?
Whenever I look at life or its circumstances through the loving eyes of my own heart, or through the unified heart of life that beats a shared rhythm in every one of us, I see love as the dominant force behind the scenes of our lives, the gift-giving power that thrives behind the throne on which we sit, the hidden influence that soulfully moves each of us to meaningful action.
Is this perception naïve? I truly believe it is not. Rather, it reflects a deeper truth than most of us access in the patterns of our daily lives—the truth that love is the dominant creative force of this planet, and the truth that our lives ring out love’s presence and passion in every moment. How glorious that, no matter how much we personally or collectively overlook love’s continuous presence, grace consistently shows up to bless us anew and to remind us that love reigns supreme in our hearts! Yes, grace leads us back, gently and smoothly, into the deeper beauty of life, the fuller picture of the magic of our lives, and the utter sweetness of love.
What is grace? It’s God’s amazing love in action—that is, it is an ongoing act of the divine’s complete devotion to you and me. So often, when I think of grace, I picture a mother of a newborn child, looking into the eyes of her beautiful baby and adoring every element of her newborn’s existence. She sees no lack, perceives no mistake and has no negative judgments about this miraculous presence, her utterly perfect child. Rather, she only sees, even knows, her child’s unfathomable wonder, innate beauty and radiant perfection. Of course, she wants only the absolute best for her child and, as we can imagine, would do anything to create happiness for this newly arrived treasure in her life.
Grace, I believe, is that adoring mother, responding lovingly to you and me, whom she perceives as her perfectly conceived and totally adorable children. Our divine source sees nothing short of her own infinite beauty and complete perfection in each of us. That awesome creator knows our inherent divine nature and sees how deserving and worthy we are, period. She, Infinite Grace, is ever at our side, sensitively aware of our needs, and desirous of giving to us every hour of every day.
No judgment, no condemnation, no punishment. Only the deepest love, unending adoration, and an incomprehensible desire to give to us anything that we need. The perfect parent, loving the perfect child!
When we utter the word grace, then, we imply complete and unconditional love—that brand of love that just wants to give us gifts because … well, just because. Grace needs and offers us no reasoning, no explanation, no rationalization for her undeniable and unconditional love. It’s just love for the sake of love, period—not because we have earned or proven our deservingness of love’s gracious gifts, but just because grace treasures us, and her unending love just wants to give … and give … and give to us.
Personally, I have come to believe that grace is a natural, commonplace part of life, rather than something unusual or simply occasional. Even if we don’t notice it regularly because of our daily preoccupations, grace is still an ongoing, pervasive presence—one that lives richly in our hearts, speaks whisperingly from our souls, and expresses magnanimously in our lives, perhaps hundreds of times each day.
When we invite ourselves to notice grace’s daily presence in our lives and hearts, it’s remarkable what begins to show up on the screen of our conscious awareness. We start to notice life’s little coincidences and grace’s more obvious manifestations. We become aware of how our personal needs are automatically being responded to, and how often divine intervention appears seemingly from nowhere to protect and care for us.
Also, we start witnessing how grace shows up, speaking more and more directly to the parts of ourselves that need love, caring and response. We become more deeply attuned to how, especially when we are down and out, depressed, or in despair, grace ushers into our lives exactly what we need in that moment. We feel more loved … then loveable … and, finally, overflowing with love.
There’s a factor in grace’s abundant activity that I have come to see is vitally important—you! I have often witnessed people reaching out to God for help, praying for a needed divine intervention, only to negate or refuse the very gift they need when it is in the midst of being given to them. Their own inner fears, personal pain or, especially, feelings of unworthiness often act as a subconscious veto to grace’s gifts, no matter how much the person may be consciously inviting those gifts to manifest. As a result, I’ve noticed, grace lovingly honors the person's subconscious refusal of her gift and quietly puts it in storage to await another, brighter day.
That’s why I want to emphasize the importance of you. You and I can help grace express her abundance in our lives by actively letting go of any leftover feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness or undeservingness. Even though understandable, these feelings, I think you would agree, are now no longer helpful or necessary in our lives. It’s time to let them go, so that we can let go more fully into grace.
To help yourself avoid this internal veto and to become grace’s partner in her bounteous expressions, may I suggest the following process—it’s one that you can do directly on your own time, and also one that you can actually allow to happen indirectly, subconsciously, while reading the enticing chapters of this book?
First, love yourself—not primarily from the cognitive or rational space of your mind, but from the very love-filled core of your own heart. Here, in the warm nest of your devoted heart, see yourself clearly through the eyes of grace—as a totally deserving, wonder-filled and completely loveable person. Then, from this place of exquisite self love, invite grace to fill your life in ways that are sourced in grace’s all-knowing wisdom. In short, “Thy will be done!”
With this simple but powerful approach, or a similar one of your own choosing, grace and you can become powerful partners in the loving creation of your life.
Because I know most of the women who are sharing their stories of grace’s blessings with us in this book, I know that they not only received the special gift of grace once or twice in their lives—as their compelling stories will attest—but also have developed a personal, intimate, enduring relationship with that beautiful expression of God that we call grace. Indeed, they live a grace-filled life every day, experiencing grace’s daily gifts and living in a personally wondrous state of gratitude. What a difference grace has made in their lives, both in the wonderful events that they are sharing with us in this book and in their own daily love affair with grace!
As you read the inspiring stories in this book, may I offer this suggestion? Use the stories of these inspiring women as a quiet, inner reflection on your own life. While reading, invite yourself to notice how grace is active and alive in your life … or how she is trying to whisper a deeply personal message to you about your life.
I wish you a wonderful journey into the miraculous expressions of life that you are about to experience in the fascinating chapters that follow. My hope and prayer is that, with these stories stirring in your mind, grace will capture the attention of your heart and awaken the life of your soul.
—Bill Bauman, Ph.D.
The Center for Soulful Living, Inc.
St. George, Utah
